Richard Edward Connell personal archive

Richard Edward Connell, author, was born on October 17, 1893 in Poughkeepsie, New York, to Richard E. and Mary Miller Connell. His father, an editor and reporter for the Poughkeepsie Press (“the Press") and a political adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt during Roosevelt’s 1910 campaign for the New York State Senate, was elected to Congress in 1911. Connell had an older sister Mary and two younger sisters, Catherine and Anne. Connell attended Poughkeepsie public schools and graduated from Poughkeepsie High School. He began covering baseball games for the Press at age 10 and was city editor at age 16. In 1911, he accompanied his father to Washington, D.C. to serve as his secretary and begin studies at Georgetown University. Connell entered Harvard as a sophomore in September 1912. His father died unexpectedly in October 1912 while campaigning for reelection. While at Harvard, Connell became editorial chairman of The Crimson and the president of the Harvard Lampoon. He also was a member of the Harvard Union, the Speaker’s Club, the Signet Society, the Harvard Catholic Club, and, after graduation, the Harvard Club of New York City.

After receiving his Harvard AB in 1915, Connell worked as a journalist on the homicide desk of the New York American, a Hearst newspaper in New York City, but left in 1916 to become a copywriter at J. Walter Thompson. Connell enlisted in the United States Army in July 1917, serving as a private in the 27th Company, Military Police Corps, 27th (New York Guard) Division, training in South Carolina as part of a mounted police unit and editing the camp newspaper, The Gas Attack. He then served at the front in Belgium and France. After his discharge in April 1919, Connell returned to advertising in New York.

In 1919, he married Louise Herrick Fox, an advertising colleague, traveled abroad, and eventually settled in Westport, Connecticut, leaving advertising for freelance writing. Connell published over 300 short stories in such magazines as The Saturday Evening Post and Colliers' Weekly. Many of his short stories were anthologized, several were O. Henry prize winners, and a number were adapted for radio and film, including “The Most Dangerous Game” (adapted three times for film), “A Reputation” (filmed as “Meet John Doe”), and “Brother Orchid” (filmed under the same name). He also wrote non-fiction magazine articles, four novels, and 13 screenplays. Connell eventually relocated to Hollywood, California to write screenplays, adaptations and plot scenarios for major studios. Connell died unexpectedly of a heart attack on November 22, 1949, in Beverly Hills, California. Connell’s entries in his Decennial (1925), Fifteenth (1930), and Twenty-Fifth (1940) Reunion Harvard class reports are notable; they are brief parodies of the kind of short fiction and screenplays he was writing at the time.